Life Lesson 10,143: Internet Service Providers Are Better at Revenge Than You

Or: That One Time I Really Regretted Scheduling Something in Advance

Because I have been spoiled by technology and first world niceties, I get to work from home a lot. This is just the absolute best thing, y’all.

Do you not awkwardly stick your tongue out while typing? Is that not a thing?

Except that it means I have to spend all day on my at-home Internet connection. Which I used to think was really great – all fast and shiny and responsive – before I started working from home.

Like this! So fast! So shiny!

It is not fast and shiny and responsive, guys. And it slowly got slower and slower and slower…for two years.**Which is definitely why I didn’t blog for two years. Definitely. Not because of laziness or forgetfulness. It’s all the Internet’s fault, I swear.

So I did what any reasonable person would do. I stole all of my husband’s** account information so that I could be the boss of the Internet connection in our house, and called my ISP.*****Oh, yeah, I totally got married in the past two years. Was that not mentioned? ***This stands for “Internet Service Provider.” It is a nice way to say “company I give all my money to.”

Eyelashes illustrate how delightfully polite I was. The first seventeen times.

Things did not improve. I called, and called again. Promises were made and routers were reset. I defended my ability to turn things off and then on again.

There are an unreasonable amount of ink dots on this set of Post-its.

Nothing got better.

Eventually all of my polite eyelashes fell out.

Not even a little bit.

Don’t pretend that you don’t have a “the Internet is being slow” face.

Finally, it was time for serious action. Finally, it was time for me to break up with my ISP. I didn’t want to be a heartless monster, but I did want my Internet to work. You know, so I could work.

So I made a plan, and set up a start date for a different ISP to come and give me all the Internet.

I didn’t want to be too harsh on my current ISP, though. I wanted to give them some warning. So I called and told them the bad news. We could no longer be together, as of next Monday. But we needed to stay together until then, because it was currently Wednesday, and I still had work to do. We could still be together for six days, so they had time to fill the hole I left with another valued customer. My ISP cried softly****, but honored my wishes.****Spent a lot of time trying to up-sell me other things like phone service and TV.

Oh wait…

Or rather, they turned my Internet off immediately. In the middle of a work day. Ten minutes before a meeting.

It clearly must have been a mistake. So I called them.

Very calmly. I called them very, very calmly.

This, of course, marking the 37th***** call I had made to them in the past six months.*****This is the actual number of times. Not an exaggeration.

This was no simple accident made by customer service, it turned out. They’d burned their bridges. They’d salted the earth. They’d somehow backdated my end-of-service date to be two months ago. They couldn’t re-open my account…so if I wanted Internet (for the next six days), I needed to open a new account.

I had no choice. If I didn’t accept their terms, I couldn’t work. So I opened this new account, amidst promises that the service would be instantly restored and better than ever before, and I could cancel my account in six days and get all my money back.

ISPs: Not really good at fixing things.

Thus, my slow Internet was restored. And six days later, I once again called and broke up with my ISP, and followed all their post-breakup instructions.

And I have spent the last eight months calling my ISP to assure them that yes, I have indeed broken up with them, with both accounts, and I do not in fact owe them any money.

I am still getting bills.

And that is how I learned that ISPs are much, much better at revenge than I am.

Now, on to other things. Are you sure you’re not my dad?? He had this exact thing happen to him like 2,567 times!

I had a problem similar to yours years ago when Earthlink was still a thing (I have blocked them from my radar, so no longer know or care if they are still a thing). We went around the bend for 6 months. It was surreal, actually.

Finally, I drafted a very professional, well-written, typed, double-spaced, CRAZY-SHIT-FACED-ANGRY letter to the CEO of the company, explaining my problem using the same amount of words that I had used/heard for the past 6-months while I spoke with EVERY SINGLE ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVE who ever worked there. In my letter was the promise that I would soon be flooding all of my friends’ (and I have lots of these things) email inboxes with my story, begging them to dump that ISP (if they had them), and to NEVER use or recommend them to anyone; and that several nasty reviews were fixing to flood the Interwebs at my enraged hands. I actually received a letter back from the CEO. He was non-plussed.

However, I believe my campaign worked, because I don’t think Earthlink is even a thing any longer. (We have PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS!!!)

Please, if this was COMCAST, I beg you to begin a campaign of your own. We use ‘comcast’ as a curse word in my family because they are so hideously horrendous as a company. Let’s work together to make them no longer a thing. 🙂

Seriously, DO NOT take my advice! Just put it all behind you. You have much more important things to worry about – like MARRIAGE!! 🙂

I'm Michelle. This is my blog. I write about women and fatness, expound upon semi-coherent thoughts I have in the middle of the night, and offer tough love to those in whom I am disappointed; they are legion.